The present invention relates to call centers, and more particularly, but not exclusively, relates to distributing and routing calls in a call center.
In a call center, various methods are used to detect the availability of a desired agent to handle a call. If the system determines the agent appears to be available, the call is actually routed to the agent. However, there is no guarantee that the agent will remain available until the routing is completed. Frequently, calls are transferred to an agent that appeared to be available, but who does not answer the newly routed call.
This difficulty can be particularly acute when calls that originate at one call center site are routed to an agent at another geographically separated call center site. Frequently, in a call center that spans multiple geographic locations, the call center site that initially receives the call polls the other call center sites to determine where the best-suited agent is located. The call then gets routed to that agent automatically even though the identified agent may not be available. The call might then have to be routed to yet another call center with an available agent, resulting in a large amount of network traffic and/or delay to the caller. Or, the caller may end up in an agent's voice mail. In view of such limitations, there is a need for further advancements in this area.